Eco Art Action

Description

This Youth WITH ART Project is a collaboration between Manitoba Environmental Youth Network (MEYN) and artist Karen Cornelius, in which grade 12 Dakota Collegiate students were introduced to environmental issues through art-making. MEYN is the youth program of Manitoba Eco Network, a non-profit organization that promotes positive environmental action and facilitates environmental awareness and expands community connections.

More information about the Manitoba Eco Network, MEYN, and their projects can be found here.

Students were introduced to environmental issues facing Winnipeg and the wider world, and responded to the issues through workshops that used a variety of art-making mediums. Projects included using printmaking techniques to remap the local neighbourhood as a greener, more environmentally friendly place, and a collage project exploring what the students loved and hated about Winnipeg.

From there, the focus was narrowed to the tangible issues of water and waste, particularly plastic water bottle waste. The class collected all the plastic water bottles in their school for four months, and then counted them. The students each created an action figure to help respond to their concerns about these issues. They animated their characters in a comic strip, created a story board, and then brought their action figure to life using stop motion video animation. The students were encouraged to explore their own creative voice as they expressed their ideas and concerns about water, plastic bottles, and waste. The results are humorous and sobering, cautionary and hopeful.

Artist Biography

Karen Cornelius is a printmaker and new media artist. She sees her work contributing to an ongoing contemporary dialogue on identity and belonging.

Cornelius was born in the United States, grew up in the Congo, attended high school in Kenya becoming a Canadian citizen while living in Ottawa and now lives in Winnipeg following two and half years working and living in Eritrea, northeast Africa. She travels often engaged in projects related to her art practice which have taken her to China, Africa and Europe.

She has exhibited her work in numerous solo and juried exhibitions in Canada, United States, Europe, Africa and China. Her work has been purchased by the Canadian Art Bank, and is held in the National Archives of Canada, Abington Hospital in Philadelphia, Ernst and Young in Toronto, St. John’s College Winnipeg as well as corporate and private collections around the world.

Gallery

Video

Want Some Water, Deer?

By Jose Miguel Perez Aparicio

Synopsis:
A factory pops up in the middle of the forest and starts producing water bottles that, on their way to the river, destroy everything they find. A curious deer will follow them.

Video

When a Water Bottle is Recycled

By Nadia Garcia, Michael Lamont-Adam, and Sydney Pankratz

Synopsis:
Using white board drawings, we show the journey a water bottle takes from the factory to where it ends up, illustrating the many misconceptions of the positive effects of recycling.

Video

Wrath of the Water Bottle King

By Dominic Ramos

Synopsis:
A normal plastic bottle is transformed into the most destructive killing machine on the planet because the humans are polluting the environment.

Video

The Water Bottle Fairy

By Nosheen Qadi and Mikayla Stark-Pugh

Synopsis:
The magical Water Bottle Fairy grants one environmentally-friendly wish and in doing so becomes a better bottle herself!

Video

Saving the World One Bottle at a Time

Synopsis:
Join the famous and powerful Blue Bottle as he cleans up the city and battles to recycle all the evil water bottles to make them good again.

Video

Revenge of the Living Plastic

By Saifemichael Alola

Synopsis:
An innocent bird is flying the streets of the future and is overwhelmed by the garbage humans discard. Damaged by fumes, the bird plummets from the sky into a pile of toxic plastic water bottles. The bird mutates into a monster and takes his revenge on the city.

Video

Penguins & Bottles

By Steven Liu

Synopsis:
Penguins move from one place to another because the ice is breaking up. The penguins have to swim with discarded plastic bottles. One penguin imagines that the floating bottles are other penguins.

Video

Miles Away

By Stephanie Zroback

Synopsis:
Plastic water bottles are used once in North America and then the plastic bottle trash is sent overseas to another country.

Video

The Angry Entity from Garbage Island

Synopsis:
A beast born of trash emerges from the depths of Garbage Island to take revenge for his polluted aquatic abode

Video

DRIP

By Jayde Lazarenko

Synopsis:
A water droplet is contained within a cage, representing corporate power. Trapped, the water droplet is controlled along with our free water.

Video

Dangerous Waters

By Ashley Rebillard

Synopsis:
A fish with super powers saves a bird from choking on a plastic water bottle cap. If we don't dispose of plastic water bottles properly then animal's lives are at risk.

Video

Plastic Bags in our Ocean

By Somto Kingsly Anyadike

Synopsis:
A plastic bag floats helplessly in the ocean, calling for help. Superhero Green Man flies to the rescue, inhaling the bag out of the sea and using his fiery breath to recycle the plastic bag into a reusable plastic cup.

Video

Attack on Salad

By Eric Kewley

Synopsis:
A farm of peas and carrots is infested with bugs. The farmer sprays his crop and the chemical run off goes into the river killing the fish.

The Winnipeg Arts Council is located on Treaty 1 Territory and on the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene Peoples and in the homeland of the Métis Nation. We offer our respect and gratitude to the traditional caretakers of this land.